Joshua Downes

108671032
HDV 102- Richard Ricioppo
Agenda Setting Theory
The theory of agenda setting refers to the medias effect on the publics idea of a topic.
More specifically, if news sources cover an issue more and more frequently, the public will
regard said topic as an important one, solely due to the fact that it is being so widely discussed by
the news. Also, the media has the ability to bend a topic to its will, perhaps warping the
perception of the actuality of said topic. The theory was discovered by Dr. Max McCombs and
Dr. Donald Shaw in regards to the 1968 election, but may be traced back to Walter Lippman in
1922, who speculated that media is the deciding factor as to what is thought by the public. He
theorized that the portrayal of an event is more important than the actual event in the publics
eye. Television News may be the first the public hear of a story, seeing as how it is how a
majority of the public depends on learning of whats actually going on. Since this is the case,
seeing a story being covered over and over again leads to the idea that the story must be
important.
The theory was composed after a study of the 1968 election displayed a strong correlation
between election issues the public thought were important, and ones which news media reported
to be most important.
The theory is most definitely a strong one. It is uncommon for one to watch a news story
critically; after seeing a story on the newsespecially regarding television, where you cannot
instantly search something up one will often forget to take into account any possibility of
bigotry or intentional misleading and actually research the topic. For this reason, Television
News has a strong capability to warp the perception of what is and is not important, and why.
However, the fact that there are multiple news networks, each competing with one
another for more viewers, networks may instead tend to what they think the viewer wants to see
(one example being Fox News showing the story on a NY Giants linebacker having a DUI).